SIDE STREETS: For firefighters, Death stalks every fire

There are rules for firefighters. Rule No. 1: Know that Death is behind every door, giggling in the smoke, reaching for you with hot fingers. Rule No. 2: You have to go through the door anyway.

I go through the door of the Lt. Paul R. Bernard Fire Station in the North End, past two Canada geese nibbling grass out front, past the American flag stirring tiredly in the shadow of the landfill’s hump.

Two firefighters died in Boston this week, which is why the flag is drooping at half mast in Fall River.

Fall River Firefighter Lt. Richard Pacheco leads me into the station, past the room with the pool table, into a quiet room with walls made of cement blocks painted beige. The space is clean but it is not homey, not at all.

We sit around an oblong table made of light-colored wood.

“I was at work,” Pacheco says, asked when he heard the news. “The best word I can use is 'emotional.'”

Furtado slipped the grip of the giggler in the smoke, left Death panting in the ashes.

“We’ve all served in the military,” Furtado says. “You lose a member of your squad, you go on.”

The enemy never dies. Death always slips out the ruined back door, scampers up through the ruined beams of the ceiling, giggling, blowing sparks out with his breath.

He’ll be waiting for you at the next one. Down in the basement, where it’s dark.

The boys who got caught by Death in Boston were in the basement.

“We know basement fires are the worst," Furtado says.

The boys around the table talk about half-empty paint cans in basements, cans of gasoline, windows replaced with cemented-in glass blocks.

“Windows are so high up, you can’t get to 'em,” Pacheco says.

“Or you can’t fit through 'em,” Furtado says.

“This is a reality check,” Firefighter Ian Moniz says.

It is, but Moniz intends to keep coming back to work.

“Always” he says.

In other words, to hell with giggling Death. You can probably get past him one more time.

And there are a lot of one more times, one more time up the stairs, one more time into the basement, one more minute to suck oxygen through the mask.

Furtado says there are about 500 fires of all types in Fall River every year.

“That’s cooking fires, vehicles, Dumpsters,” he says.

“Not too many Dumpsters,” he says. “This isn’t the '80s anymore, when every kid had to light a Dumpster on fire.”

Death doesn’t much like Dumpster fires or vehicle fires. He likes to get you in a tight space, on a stairway far from the windows, in some smoky back bedroom where he can get his hands on you and choke you out before the other boys can get to you.

Furtado is investigating a recent fire on Fulton Street.

“This is not a predictable job,” he says.

And you’re better off to believe that training and keeping cool can keep Death at bay. If you don’t believe that, you have to believe it’s all luck, that the giggle beyond the smoke can’t be outwitted, only out-lucked.

“We listened to the audio from the fire in Boston,” Pacheco says. “You hope you can learn something from it.”

It’s 3 p.m., Thursday. There are nine more hours in the day, 24 hours in the next day, seven days in a week, forever.

The firehouses are manned on every one of those weeks, every day, every hour.

And every firefighter waits for that moment in the choking smoke when you slip Death’s grip.